Last night I actually pinpointed the moment I got the swine flu. Actually I think the swine flu falls neatly in the same category as monkey pox, bird flu, mad cow, and the dozen or so other animal named bullshit health panics we have had in the past decade. Nice way to make some news, but somewhere between 3000 and 5000 folks (depending on whose numbers you choose to believe) have died of this particular disease worldwide while the CDC reports that 36,000 people die of the regular flu every year in the United States alone.

Imagine you were reading the above paragraph to a sentient being who had no knowledge of humanity or our culture. Then tell him or her to guess which one is making the public go monkeyfuck insane with paranoia. The regular flu is clearly killing 7 times more people in one country than the swine flu is worldwide.

Now imagine trying to explain the stupidity factor that makes the public afraid of everything on the news. Agonizing. Now here’s the other thing- next year there will be a disease called donkeytoe or something that will incite panic in the tiny minds of tiny minded people around the world, and once again nothing will happen, and then the next year when a strain of Jellyfish aids kills a dozen elderly patients in Korea everyone will freak out yet again, and so on ad infinitum.

I don’t know if it is a recent development, but it seems that we as a society (worldwide) really enjoy this exercise of pointless hand-wringing. On a small scale, take Georgia – everyone got their panties twisted last year when we had the drought. Then it rained all fall and winter and we were back to normal. And then it happened again this year the exact same way. And it has been this way for at least the 20 years I have lived here, yet the level of anxiety is still at a fever pitch. Every. Single. Year.

On a larger scale, take something like government aid to the impoverished – be it in a local community or an impoverished country. here’s a great idea – let’s just give them money. That’ll solve the problem because they won’t be poor by definition anymore. But it doesn’t solve anything. And without education, cultural changes, and lots of birth control, the problem gets worse. But we keep doing the same damn thing and expecting a different result. What about in the 70s when everybody was battening down the hatches for the coming of the next ice age? Remember that? I’m barely old enough to recall bits and pieces of it, but by all accounts it was the same amount of “indisputable scientific proof that no reputable scientist can deny without fear of lynching” as we are hearing today about global warming.

Fine. If we need to invent a reason to make people waste less and conserve more, I’m all for it. I just wish it wasn’t a world where people had to be threatened with disaster to make simple changes. And yes I have seen Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 911 and several other movies that “really make you think”. They did make me think. They made me realize that people are becoming incapable of objectivity. I’m not a meteorologist or a conspiracy theorist or a left wing right wing whatever. Just someone using logic and common sense.

If history has taught me anything, it’s that we never learn anything from history.

So I probably don’t have the swine flu, but at 11:32 last night I felt that weird congesty tightness in my chest, and I coughed. And it hurt a little. So I went to bed and woke up at 3 am thinking I was going to freeze to death. I’m like a blast furnace when I sleep, so waking up cold is extremely unusual for me. This morning I got out of bed and my hair hurt, which is my self-diagnosis for a fever. So I’m sick. Ironic as it would be if it did turn out to be the swine flu, I may merely turn out to be number 5001 to die of it, and that is neither pan, nor demic.

On with the content. I use the term “douchebag” so much I am starting to wish I had a better word. But it is so universally descriptive that it just continues to work. Maybe I’m getting old, but there are a few abnormally douchey trends rearing their douchey heads lately and they show no signs of stopping. Much like the health and environmental scares of the past and present, we could learn from the crappy trends throughout history and avoid them if we just took the time to remember how much the 70’s sucked.

Insect sunglasses –moronic glasses that start at your hairline and end at your nipples. Are we that frightened of the sun, or did I miss the forecast that called for arc welding and magnesium fires? These glasses are starting to ooze into men’s eyewear, too. I really wouldn’t give a damn about any of it but when want to buy some normal human sunglasses my choices are limited to satellite dishes coated with a pseudo-shiny purple tinted polymer coating from the future. Everywhere I turn it looks like people are dressed up for mosquito night at the retard factory.

Jeans for dudes who need more zippers, rhinestones, and beatings – these dumb jeans with embroidery and metal studs all over them are becoming standard issue for edgy wanna-be rockabilly douchebags everywhere. It looks like they swept the floor of the clothing factory that no one loved, threw it in a blender, and cut a roughly pant-like shape out of it. Maybe I’m mistaken – the guy needs three random buckles hanging off of his belt loops and a flap over his front pocket with a caribbeaner to hold it closed. Oh, and the random splatter pattern sewn into the left leg is aerodynamic. Seriously. Does everything have to be a statement? And by the way, if those pants are held up by a studded, bedazzled, or otherwise shiny belt, keep in mind that belts can be used to hang oneself. Just a suggestion.

Chokers on men – stunningly unattractive on women, I am more frequently seeing dudes trying to look like a cross between an inuit shaman and an asshole. Look at this hemp string around my neck with a tribally insignificant symbol hanging from it. When I go hiking I wear a claw that I found in the trash outside a gift shop at the Denver airport, but could have come from an eagle or a bear. I sit under trees and play my guitar and write songs about being a mariner, going on safari, and other things I haven’t done. I’m awesome. Yes, that is a picture of the Survivor host guy. I couldn’t find a better one.

Weird twisty hair helmets – Hairstyles typically cycle between long and short, but the current iteration of long hair is a joke. Again, it looked stupid when the Partridge Family did it, and it looks stupid now. I was talking to a guy last week in a coffee shop about his book idea (shocker), and he was rocking the twist hair. Every three to five seconds, he’d run his fingers across his brow to get the hair out of his eyes. It got so fucking annoying that I finally said “Dude. Get a headband or a haircut. That thing you keep doing is making me insane.” He was all “What? What thing?” Really? You are not aware that you are making the hand swipe move at least 500 times a day? Stupid people have stupid haircuts.

Finally, one that my brother brought to my attention – “hey, my shirt looks like a tattoo. I can bench press your face.” Fuck you, tool. You spent $100 on a tee shirt that you will laugh at in a year.

I’d really like to breach the subject of marriage making people retarded, but during the course of writing this entry my fever seems to have gotten worse and I think I am sweating gravy. Also the marriage part of this installment is still a little chewy in the center. I’ll flesh it out this week and put something up next weekend. Everybody have a good turkeyday or whatever godless holiday you crazy wiccans celebrate when you aren’t boiling newts and flicking one another’s beans.

Oh, and keep the suggestions coming. I’ve gotten some good stuff.

Wait. I want to tell you about the last time I threw up, because I feel like that subject might be coming up again. This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a reader about it. Her name is Kelly.

I woke up with a raging headache, possibly from the wine I had last night, but I’m a professional drinker and usually pretty good at knowing when to say when. I was also quite nauseated. Not nauseous, as so many ill-informed people say, but nauseated. See “nauseous” is a word that is defined as “something that nauseates or causes nausea”. So spoiled meat is nauseous and makes you nauseated. And when you go to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nauseous and look it up, please do so with the understanding that dictionaries have gone the way of American public schools. That is to say that they lowered their standards to suit the laziest and dumbest among us.

It started with “ain’t”. As soon as all of the rednecks found out that ain’t was in the dictionary, they felt empowered in their ignorance because “Ain’t IS a word and I cn’ prove it. Lookit up in that thar wordybook, ya dirty knowitall yankee.” Because so many people use the wrong form of nauseous, someone at the top of the retard pyramid decided it would be easier to change the definition than to try and show people the error of their ways. So when you look up the word nauseous, one of the definitions will probably be the incorrect one. Now that we’re clear on that…

After lying in bed for some time listening to my head pound, I started to get a wave of pukitude washing over me like a warm wet blanket. Warm and wet with cat urine. I started thinking “I’m going to barf…huh. That is something I cannot remember doing in at least two years. I wonder if I’m still any good at it.”

Barfing is something one must practice to maintain proficiency. I hate throwing up, which is like saying “I hate abcesses on my taint” I’m sure you are on my side with that one, Kelly, as most people are. Unless you have an eating disorder and vomit to stay thin and attractive to our discriminating society. In which case I say go forth and vomit, you thin beautiful woman. Kelly can be a dude’s name too, but your handwriting isn’t giving me any clues to that. So forgive me if I made the wrong assumption (guys look pretty and thin when they puke, too).

The anticipation is probably the worst part, because you keep feeling worse and worse and then your salivary glands start going bonkers and you know this is about to be really gross and sort of painful. “But you’ll feel so much better when it’s over” they say. Yes. And if I beat you with a toilet plunger for ten minutes it would feel great when that stopped too.

I had that strange moment where you have to figure out how to stand, sit, or kneel to get the most out of it. There is a comfort factor to it, where you don’t want to be kneeling on a tile floor in your underwear, a stability factor – if I slip and fall or pass out, am I going to land with my face in the toilet, or slump off to the side? and a grossness factor – you may not know or care how clean your toilet is until you have to put your face right in it. I opted for the Crouching Lotus position, with one hand on the side of the toilet seat and the other on the side of the tub, sort of taking a knee like I’m about to get a pep talk from coach Wilson.

Anyway, I sprayed forth and was actually sort of amused to see that I got some on my hand and a little on the floor. I’m thinking “Is this the first time I’ve ever done this? I mean, how big is the toilet in relation to your mouth, stupid?” I was also finding that my stomach muscles were contracting in ways that nature did not intend. Then I got a cramp in my side that forced me to stand up and have a million dollar idea – the stand-up vomitorium. A catch basin at chin level with handles fastened to the wall and a small garbage disposal. It would remain retracted into the wall when not in use, being refrigerated so it is nice and soothing when you rest your head on the patented forehead nook. That’d be a worthwhile invention if people barfed several times a day.

I think it would really catch on with alcoholics and girls with daddy issues or visible tattoos (both of which indicate an imminent eating disorder. Well documented science. Look it up.)

Being forced to do anything other than barf while barfing is really sort of impossible. As I stood up, the last of whatever it was came out and hit the toilet backstop. Great. Now I feel like shit, my hand looks like I just mixed pancake batter with it, and I have to clean this mess up before I can do anything else. I finally found a washcloth and wiped everything down, got in the shower, and stood there for a good 40 minutes. I still don’t feel very good, but it has been fun writing to you about it.

I’m going to take a nap.

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